Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
August 18, 2025, 10:35 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
SoftBank agrees to invest $2B in Intel, paying $23/share for Intel's common stock and buying ~2% of its outstanding shares; INTC jumps ~6% to ~$25 after hours  —  Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
Bloomberg:
Sources: the Trump administration is in discussions to take a stake of ~10% in Intel, converting some or all of Intel's $10.9B CHIPS Act grants into equity  —  The Trump administration is in discussions to take a stake of about 10% in Intel Corp., according to a White House official …
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service will get RTX 5080 GPUs in September, letting users of its $20/month Ultimate tier stream in 5K at up to 120fps
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Texas AG Ken Paxton probes Meta and Character.AI over claims they deceptively market chatbots as mental health tools, misleading kids and other vulnerable users  —  Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into both Meta AI Studio and Character.AI for …
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $2.54B, vs. $2.5B est., and Q1 and FY 2026 guidance above estimates; PANW jumps 4%+ after hours  —  Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period.
Kia Kokalitcheva / PitchBook:
American Exceptionalism Acquisition, a SPAC led by Chamath Palihapitiya and focused on energy, AI, DeFi, and defense, files for a US IPO, seeking to raise $250M  —  Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya has filed documents with the SEC for a new special purpose acquisition company …
Sheryl Estrada / Fortune:
An MIT report says 95% of GenAI pilots at companies have little to no financial impact, mainly due to a “learning gap” for both the tools and the companies  —  Good morning.  Companies are betting on AI—yet nearly all enterprise pilots are stuck at the starting line.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Nvidia debuts the Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2, a hybrid Mamba-transformer model, saying it achieves scores comparable to or better than Qwen3-8B on reasoning benchmarks  —  Small models are having a moment.  On the heels of the release of a new AI vision model small enough to fit on a smartwatch …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Source: Arm has hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sinno to help develop its own chips; he previously worked on Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips  —  Arm Holdings has hired Amazon.com (AMZN.O) artificial intelligence chip director Rami Sinno to bolster its plans to develop its own complete chips …
Jody Godoy / Reuters:
The US FTC sues Key Investment Group, operator of sites like TotalTickets.com, for skirting ticket limits to buy up and resell live event tickets at a markup  —  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group for evading purchasing limits to buy up thousands …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Grok's website is exposing the underlying prompts for its AI personas, including one for a “crazy conspiracist” persona that spends “a lot of time on 4chan”  —  The website for Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok is exposing the underlying prompts for a wealth of its AI personas …
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Google increases its stake in bitcoin miner and datacenter operator TeraWulf from 8% to 14%, bringing its total investment to ~$3.2B; WULF jumps 10%+  —  TeraWulf stock rallied more than 4% after Google hiked its stake in the bitcoin miner and data center operator as it funds an expansion of its Lake Mariner, New York, facility.

Sponsor Posts

Clay:
Turn any GTM idea into reality  —  Clay helps GTM teams combine AI agents, enrichment, and intent data to move faster and turn insights into action.
Soxton:
AI-powered law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Zoho:
Your website, your brand: A website building guide for tech partners  —  In a competitive market, trust is what makes businesses choose you and stay with you.  As a tech partner, you can take steps to build …
IDrive:
Geometric Grand Unification — Solving the Hubble Tension & Proton Mass  —  Physics solved?  AI verifies model unifying gravity & particles by deriving constants from vacuum geometry.  Identifies void-driven topology.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
 The Truth Behind Automation Claims in Customer Support | Cresta CEO Ping Wu
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
 Getting paid to vibe code: Inside the new AI-era job | Lazar Jovanovic (Professional Vibe Coder)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
 Software In Shambles, OpenAI vs. Anthropic Super Brawl, Amazon's Struggles
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
 Elon Musk's Mega-Merger + We Test Google's Project Genie + What's Next for Moltbook Creator
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
 Jeff Bezos Used To Be In Love with The Washington Post. What Happened?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 Special Edition: Key findings from the Microsoft AI Diffusion Report
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:35 PM ET, August 18, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Memos: Will Lewis steps down as WaPo publisher and CEO; former Tumblr CEO Jeff D'Onofrio, who joined WaPo in June 2025 as CFO, is now acting publisher and CEO

Laya Neelakandan / CNBC:
In a reversal, Trump endorses Nexstar's $6.2B acquisition of Tegna, saying “We need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks”

Reuters:
A Hong Kong court sentences the 78-year-old Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison over national security charges, ending a five-year legal saga

More News

Ben Bergman / Business Insider:
Sources: Anthropic asked Menlo to use the VC firm's own capital for investment in the startup and not an SPV, as Menlo did in a previous funding round
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
HR giant Workday says hackers stole an unspecified amount of personal information, such as names and email addresses, from one of its third-party CRM platforms
Max Buondonno / The Shortcut:
Samsung announces the Galaxy Buds3 FE, with a new AirPods Pro-like design, improved ANC, and upgraded audio quality, launching September 4 for $149.99
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Grammarly debuts AI agents for writing and grading assistance, like an AI grader agent and a citation finder agent, available to Grammarly Free and Pro users

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Digital bank Monzo, which has 13M UK customers, plans to launch a mobile phone service; Revolut and Klarna, each with ~11M UK customers, announced similar plans
Financial Times:
Sources: the EU and the US have delayed formalizing their trade deal partly over “non-tariff barriers”, like relaxing the DSA, which the EU sees as a red line
Debby Wu / Bloomberg:
SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will still run the plant and make AI servers as part of Softbank's $500B Stargate project with OpenAI and Oracle
Edward White / Financial Times:
China's podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in 2025, up from <700K five years ago, driven by grassroots hosts instinctively navigating China's red lines
Bluesky: @mranthropology and @yaqiu
X: @patrickc and @edwardwhitenz
LinkedIn: Yi Yang and Edward White
Himanshi Akhand / Reuters:
Australia's ACCC says Google agreed to pay a AU$55M fine over deals with Telstra and Optus to preinstall only Google Search on Android phones from 2019 to 2021
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter